The writing was on the wall for the developed economies, but now the lettering is getting bolder. In the first six months of this year, India has moved up two places to the third position on the list of top steel producing countries; only China and Japan are ahead.

While every other country in the pecking order has witnessed a steep decline in production, India and China are the only two countries to have registered growth. India's steel production grew by 1.3 per cent to 27.55 million tonnes (mt); China, with a very high base, startled even experts with a growth of 1.2 per cent to 266.58 mt.

The United States led the diving board with a 50 per cent decline, with the likes of Germany, South Korea and Brazil populating the list.

"I have always maintained that we would continue to grow despite the global recession because the latent demand for steel in the domestic market is huge," said SK Roongta, chairman, Steel Authority of India Ltd — the country's largest steel producer. "Our per capita consumption for steel is still one of the lowest in the world and the potential is so huge that at times our production is not able to match up to the demand."

But will India manage to hold on to the fairytale growth when everybody else is downing shutters? Indications are, yes: SAIL's production was up 3.7 per cent in April-June ’09; JSW was up 45 per cent and Tata Steel 20 per cent.

"The demand for steel across sectors is on the way up and the worst clearly seems to be over," said Sajjan Jindal, vice chairman, JSW Steel. JSW’s Indian plants are working full time, but US operations are badly hit.

this shows how badly the world at large has performed, a target that last year we thought we could achieve only in 2013 has been done 4yeas ahead of time and well there goes the tale of the so called economic experts who keep saying something and some thing else keeps happening and i may add, its all music to my ears as its all good news.

its good to see the industry is still growing and this further speaks well about the industries which heavily use steel related products and this growth at a time when the steel exports have taken a big hit is commendable, and certainly argues well for the economy on the whole.

my only wish, the abhishek manu singhvi's now dont start dancing to this and start projecting this accomplishment all a doing of the cong govt where as the facts state something different.

India's steel production rose just 1.3% and China's 1.2% and the steel production of the erstwhile top producers like S.K, Japan, US, Ukraine fell by over 30-50%, helping India claim the 3rd spot.

India had originally outlined steel investments to the tune of 50-125bn$ to reach this "coveted" position. The investment figure has gone down significantly due to the economic crisis; neither the growth in our steel production has been not as rapid as had been outlined.

Nevertheless, the fact that the steel production has increased, many anchor investments are still in the pipeline goes to show that the Indian economy is resilient as compared to many developed economies.

The multiplier effect of steel to GDP is 1.2x-1.7x; ie for every $ invested/spent in steel production results in a corresponding increase of 1.2-1.7$ in GDP. This is largely because Steel has tremendous backward and forward linkages.

So this rise in steel production (and consumption) goes to show a healthy GDP and growth in many core industries such as mining, power generation, transport, manufacturing, infrastructure etc.

hi guyz, back into forums after a long long time.
Orissa, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand have great opportunity to satisfy Indias rising demand for steel from construction sector. frankly I don't know what is making India No.3 Steel producer in the world, we haven't realised our potential yet. if planned investments materialize within few years, we can cross targets easily. Tata, Mittal, Posco, Jindal can expand rapidly to meet the demand but pricing issues, iron ore also need to be sorted out, after they have to compete Chinese prices.

If we are back on 9% growth curve for few years then we may have to start importing more and more steel.

if we can sort of issues like land aquisition, farmer compensation, environmental issues and reduce redtape, infrastructure will automatically fall in place to cater to manufacturing companies.
Steel companies themselves will build ports, power plants to solve the problem. Sometimes Railways and Roads.

lets see what no.1 steel maker mittal will do in India. Much depends on how much demand is there from Construction sector.

As per the planned investments India's steel production would've reached 75mt by 2012 and 200mt by 2020, I don't think the targets will be met.

China lacks a competitive advantage in steel. The cheapest steel in the world is produced by Tata Steel and then comes some Ukrainian company.

China imports the two main raw materials iron ore and coal.

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I didn't realize that. I was strictly going by the numbers, but why do you think China lacks a competitive advantage in steel? I know they import a LOT of coal, but how do India's iron reserves compare with China's? I somewhat recall reading in my school days that India exports iron ore to China. Is this true? Another question is, can the production scale well while maintaining competitive advantage?

hi guyz, back into forums after a long long time.
Orissa, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand have great opportunity to satisfy Indias rising demand for steel from construction sector. frankly I don't know what is making India No.3 Steel producer in the world, we haven't realised our potential yet. if planned investments materialize within few years, we can cross targets easily. Tata, Mittal, Posco, Jindal can expand rapidly to meet the demand but pricing issues, iron ore also need to be sorted out, after they have to compete Chinese prices.

If we are back on 9% growth curve for few years then we may have to start importing more and more steel.

if we can sort of issues like land aquisition, farmer compensation, environmental issues and reduce redtape, infrastructure will automatically fall in place to cater to manufacturing companies.
Steel companies themselves will build ports, power plants to solve the problem. Sometimes Railways and Roads.

lets see what no.1 steel maker mittal will do in India. Much depends on how much demand is there from Construction sector.

Click to expand...

I would like to know the basics of the equation.

Also someone mentioned that steel production has a 1.2-1.7 multiplicative factor on growth of economy. How?

I didn't realize that. I was strictly going by the numbers, but why do you think China lacks a competitive advantage in steel? I know they import a LOT of coal, but how do India's iron reserves compare with China's? I somewhat recall reading in my school days that India exports iron ore to China. Is this true? Another question is, can the production scale well while maintaining competitive advantage?

I would like to know the basics of the equation.

Also someone mentioned that steel production has a 1.2-1.7 multiplicative factor on growth of economy. How?

Appreciate very much. Thanks.

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India exports lots of iron ore to China but chinese recently found lots iron ore, they may not need to import from other countries.

the main reason Steel companies are interested in India is because of availaibility of iron ore, coal, cheap labour, strong demand for steel as consumption grows. the main challenge is land aquisition and farmer compensation in India, then comes infrastructure. Mittal also talks about redtape in India.

i am not aware of equations but manufacturing sector does encourage people in rural India to move from agriculture to jobs.

the main problem here is most steel projects are not moving beyond land aquisition, that means if India continues strong growth, we may have to import more steel.

the facilities and equipment of India steel industry is decades behind CHina.

most steel plants in CHIna were built recently and have world last facilites and eqipment. they can produce much more types/models of steels than India, from lowest-end steel to high-end steel.

Due to cheap ores, India may produce low-end steel in a lower price ,but india has serous trouble in manufacture high-end, even mid-end steels,for the sake of its outdated factory facilities.

just have a "google", then you should know where you proud tata's car steel is imported from.

furthermore ,india even could not produce steel for its AC,until recently.

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The main problem here is satisfying demand for Indias construction sector, auto companies etc if India is able to do that its more than enough for steel companies. anything else will be exported. So if there is no demand for any forms of hi-end steel, no production.

still India gets FDI from foreign companies. Posco, Acrelor Mittal- the worlds largest steel maker. Tata itself is expanding and I am sure when they invest in new plants, they will build all forms of steel with hi-end equipment and why not when there is strong local demand and lots of raw materials availaible. if its not availaible in India, then equipment it can imported.

besides Tata already has Corus in its pocket. I guess Corus can produce all forms of hi-end steel, hence Tata steel will implement same technology for Indian steel plants too. main problem is with the global demand. if demand is enough in India then Indian companies will produce all forms of steel.

India has other challenges, land aquisition and farmer compensation takes lot of time, if govt forces people, they can kick govt out next time during elections unlike China where everything can happen so fast and people have no option but to accept what their govt says.

just have a "google", then you should know where you proud tata's car steel is imported from.

One of the world’s largest steel makers - Tata Steel gets new clients in the form of Volkswagen and Nissan-Renault. Other car makers who also satisfy their steel requirements from Tata’s Jamshedpur plant include Ford, Maruti, Hyundai, and Toyota.

Tata Steel supplies skin-panels from Ford and Hyundai. Maruti Suzuki sources steel for its inner panels and 96% steel for the Toyota Innova comes from Tata Steels. Though some of the steel requirements for the Nano will be imported, the company will also be supplying steel for the Nano project.

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and yes ofcourse we are very very proud of Nano. its one major innovations that happened in India.

if ore cost is not taken into cosideration,Chinese steel industry has huge cost superority to all non-chinese steel industries.

without the limiation of ore, chinese steel industry would wipe off all steel industry outside china.

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what has that got to with p2pradas post or the topics name?, we are not talking about global steel industry or chinese specifically. Its only and only about Indian Steel industry and specifically about the total production figues.

also all other countries are not idiots to allow cheap chinese steel to be openly dumped in their countries. There are lot more issues involved here before we can simply write off rest of the world and praise your own country. right from the way Govt functions, supports the industry with sops, infrastructure, tax, the way steel companies are allowed to expand, the way climate change issues are handled.